What would make you convert to a religion?

Now here's an interesting question.

Especially if you already subscribe to one religion, what are the sorts of things that another religion might profess that would make you want to convert to it?

Would miracles be part of it?
A moral code?
A set of laws for governing societal behaviour?
A 'better' deity? (And what would make one deity better than another?)

Equally, are there any religions could you adopt that would not require you to renounce your current one?

Are there any that would mean that, if you did not already profess a religious belief, you would not have to change any of your ideological outlooks? i.e. are there any religions around that would not require you to change your mind about some currently held idea or ideal? (Perhaps with the exclusion of the fact that a deity actually exists!)

List of references in AronRa's latest YT video (pt 1)

AronRa's "The 14th foundational falsehood of christianity" takes a look at, among other things, some of the things professed by Ray Comfort and __ when they tried to prove god existed without reference to faith. Comfort is shown in the video explaining why god is good. Here are several of Comfort's quotes, with AronRa's commentary and citations, along with a few relevant summarisations from across the web.

Comfort: "God is [...] good, he's just."
In response, AronRa writes: "God describes himself as being as much evil as he is good; and that he created evil - not as the absence of good, but proud of that creation" and cites Isaiah 45:5-7

I have pulled the relevant passage from The Skeptics Annotated Bible

45:5 I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me
45:6 That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the LORD, and there is none else.
45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

There is a commentary on 45:7 which also references a couple of other places that say much the same, and one that it feels contradicts the statement:
2 Kings 6:33

6:33 And while he yet talked with them, behold, the messenger came down unto him: and he said, Behold, this evil is of the LORD; what should I wait for the LORD any longer?

Amos 3:6

3:6 Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it?

1 John 4:8

4:8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.

LookingUntoJesus.net suggests that 'evil' here should be better translated from the Hebrew as 'adversity, affliction, bad, calamity' rather than 'evil', and points out that the texts are supposedly directed at peoples whom God was attempting to chide back into the "path of righteousness" (and therefore concludes that there is no contradiction between 1John4:8 and the other two passages).

I'm not sure that this shows God being good or just, even in that light. It sounds then, that he is threatening to cause adversity and calamity if people don't do what he says. To me, that sounds more like a parent who feels unable to control their children...but then since he made them what they are (unlike, or at least in a more direct sense than, human parents), surely he should know how to control them - if that's what he's trying to do. And if he's not trying to control them, why threaten anything?

tektonics.org also argues along similar lines about the misinterpretation of the word, although they do say that '`ra' is used in places to mean moral evil. They point at the literary parallel - light/darkness - shalom/`ra... where shalom is generally translated peace, and is never moral goodness. So we have peace/war? peace/conflict? Again while this avoids the verse implying what it appears to in English, it still does not show a 'just' god, really, does it?

It all reminds me of the first verse of the Tao Te Ching - without dark there cannot be light/without tall there cannot be short/without good there cannot be bad (paraphrased, but I think those three lines are pretty close). In this light, it would seem that perhaps god has caused there to be peace such that humans could enjoy it, but in doing so he had to cause the antithesis of peace and cause humans to kill each other...


OK - this is a lot longer than I had anticipated. I will post the other commentaries by AronRa in another entry at another time...

Pope's Christmas address

"May the divine light of Bethlehem radiate throughout the Holy Land," he said. "May it spread throughout Lebanon, Iraq and the whole Middle East."

(Pope's Christmas address)

One has to wonder if the pope realises that that sentiment is probably quite insulting to those people who are not catholic (at a guess, the majority) in said lands... Or if he is completely oblivious to the tones of "my religion is the only one that matters".